September 10, 2015

Boulevard of Broken Dreams: an interview with Simon Marshall-Jones, author of "Biblia Longcrafta"

Biblia Longcrofta by Simon Marshall-Jones is a series of connected short fiction stories, semi-autobiographical in nature, set in the imaginary town of Longcroft. Although it has no precise geographical location in the ‘real’ world, nevertheless it is located somewhere on the northern coastline of Britain. It exists contemporaneously and separately in a different time stream from the rest of the world, the reasons for the split lost in the mists of time. It is no ordinary town, however – here miracles happen on an everyday basis, and the numinous and marvellous sit side-by-side with the banal and mundane. Into this wonderland comes a tattooed stranger called Simeon, a man bored of his old life, but still unsure of what his place in the world is, who he is, and what purpose he has.

Through a series of connected incidents, he comes to understand the world around him, and the person he is. Along the way he meets wonders and living myths and, through interacting with them, he finds his true destiny – however, it’s not what he was expecting nor what he would have chosen for himself.Simon Marshall-Jones is better known as the heavily tattooed driving force behind Spectral Press and its offshoots Theatrum Mundi and rEvolution SF. He lives in the Midlands of the UK with his wife Liz and six cats, six guinea-pigs, five chickens, two rabbits, and one dog.

Simon:
The
simple answer is that I have been yearning to nail some of the ideas
swirling around my head on to paper for years. I’ve started and
left unfinished numerous shorts over the last five years, something
which irks me greatly. I had the ideas; all I lacked was a literary
framework on which to hang them. I’d attempted to put fingers to
keyboard to flesh those ideas out, but without success. These eight
tales, however, took me four weeks to write – an unusual and very
concentrated dose of motivation and inspiration I took advantage of.
This doesn’t happen to me very often…

Gef:
Where does Longcroft come from? Is this a setting that came about
unexpectedly for you while writing or something you set out to
develop from the get-go?

Simon:
Just
prior to the writing, I had a short series of dreams set in a village
which I visited in my dreamlife. As is the case with dreams, everyday
logic was not one of the place’s attributes. I can’t remember the
specifics, but several incidents occurred which would never have
happened in real-life. Without quite knowing how or why the
connection was made, but the notion that I should create a series of
tales based in this ‘village’ (which eventually expanded into a
‘town’) just appeared to be a logical step to take. And so, in a
fit and flurry of activity, I pounded my keyboard into submission and
produced all eight stories in short order. The two short at the end
of the book were written at the start of my ‘career’, if you can
call it that…

Gef:
Along with your own writing, running Spectral Press has allowed you
to champion some great short fiction by other authors. For you,
what's the allure to the short story, particularly within the horror
genre?

Simon:
Horror,
especially, needs to be short, sharp, and punchy to achieve maximum
effect, so this is why I am particularly enamoured of the short form
in this instance. I’ve read novels where the narrative loses steam
and impact, simply because it was a story which would have been more
suited to being shorter. The sustaining of atmosphere and dread is
harder to maintain in a novel, because
one
has to fill it out and sustain the reader’s interest. That’s not
to say of course that it’s impossible, just harder to do
successfully. Short stories force the writer to become more focused,
to strip away extraneous matters and hone in on the essential core.
And this is what I particularly adore about shorts – Dennis
Etchison’s work is a perfect example of what I mean. He
concentrates solely on what he needs to tell his story, nothing else.
Unnecessary verbiage is dispensed with – unlike what I do.

Gef:
Is there much of a gear shift for you when editing your own work as
opposed to someone else's? Do you find yourself reticent or eager for
someone else to act as editor when it comes to your own stories?

Simon:
I
refuse to edit my own work – I always advise other authors to get
their work edited by an outside source so why shouldn’t I abide by
my own words? Plus, after I’ve written the stories I want some
distance, so giving them to someone else is ideal in that respect.

Gef:
How have you found your progression as a writer thus far?

Simon:
The
advantage of having been an editor for five years means that I have
subconsciously learnt how story works. However, I realise that I am a
bit of a word-fiend, a sesquipedalian, and that for me rich prose is
paramount rather than punchiness. It’s just the way I am most
comfortable writing, and my aim is to zoom in on atmosphere and
emotion. Certainly, my writing has improved enormously since I write
my first story (‘Feathers’, which is included in my debut
collection Biblia
Longcrofta
as a bonus tale).My
work is written primarily for my own entertainment, however, but the
fact that others like my work is a gratifying bonus.

Gef:
What's the worst piece of writing advice you ever received? Or what
piece of writing advice do you wish would just go away?

Simon:
Now
that’s a difficult one, primarily because I very rarely read books
or articles on writing and technique. I do listen to editors though,
and take their suggestions very seriously. I suppose, if I get down
to it, the advice to keep things simple annoys me slightly, but
that’s a very intensely personal thing, down to nothing but my own
taste. I suppose it stems from my childhood, when I was obsessed with
discovering new words and their meanings. I loved the way they
‘tasted’ in my mouth, and any new examples I would say over and
over just to see how they felt when spoken. I make no apology for
writing the way I do – it feels as natural as breathing to me. Some
people like it, others don’t.

Gef:
What kind of guilty pleasures do you have when it comes to books or
movies or whatnot?

Simon:
One
of my ‘guilty’ pleasures when it comes to movies (although why I
should feel guilty about it I have no idea) is David Lynch’s Dune
– for me it comes closest to Frank Herbert’s immense vision of
internecine warfare and politics. And I’ve always preferred Close
Encounters of the Third Kind to
Star
Wars. Plus
I love Ralph Bakshi’s The
Lord of the Rings.

Gef:
What projects are you cooking up that folks can expect in the near
future?

Simon:
I
am currently writing stories for the second volume of Biblia
Longcrofta tales,
plus I have ideas for one or two novellas based in the same universe.
There are other non-Longcroft related materials I am working on as
well, and I’ll be submitting them when I’ve polished them up a
bit. Beyond that, I shall continue the publishing side of things, and
writing when the muse takes me. Or she offers either wine, port, or
absinthe.